Any thoughts on Lord of the Rings, War in the North

November 2nd, 2011, 14:56

Some negatives: Lots of nice scenery but you can't go to much of it other then a tight path forward. The Ai pathing is not very good and I find they are in my way a lot. The combat is repetivive especially when you get to defense parts of missions where you just stay in one spot and defend against hordes of creatures. The companions do a pretty good job of coming to revive you and the voice acting is pretty good. At least they aren't using the same 4 actors for all the voices. However, the character leveling feels pretty generic, this a game we have all played before. Just having the LOTR lore makes it better then a bunch of those action RPG's like Hand of God but not much. So far its a 7.0 for me but barely. I think its some fun co-op and that is where most of the game's appeal is.

I would agree a solid 7 out of 10. Good but not great. Additionally there is some oddness with the team inventory management or I should say the lack of it.

In the game you have the ability to give items to your AI companions but you have no way from what I can see to have them equip items while playing. Essentially you have hirelings that are helpful and effective but any control over leveling them or choosing gear from within a game session without leaving the instance does not seem possible. Still having fun after playing a bit longer but can see the limits of the game.

I am going to retract a bit of what I said; this is a very fun,enjoyable game. Great presentation,visuals and production values. Very fun with mates or not. It really picks up later after the first chapter and becomes very addictive. Nice amount of side quests and all the LOTR lore. There is much more loot dropping when you play multiplayer and rewarding when you find that nice new piece of loot. Solid 8.0 for me and loving it so far. I really hope they add some DLC for PC owners.

Druin was right with his news post right, it is extremely action oriented and combat is a treat. Not Skyrim's league but very fun and that is why I play video games.

Is there a good variety of enemies? I was watching some youtube vids and it looks decent. But I only saw orcs, trolls and spiders. Maybe something else too, but it sure seemed to be a LOT of orcs, trolls and spiders.

Lots of Orcs Trolls and Spiders so you got me there. Goblins also and different levels of Orcs. Magic users, soldiers, Uruk-hai, etc. The main enemy is human.

That setting is at the same time as the fellowship; Acting on Aragorn's behalf, you and your small group go to the north and stir up trouble with one of Sauron's leaders who is gathering a large force to help take over Middle earth. Dwarven warrior, Dunedain Ranger and Elven Loremaster are the race and class choices but really you can play all three by switching in hub towns.

Two extra challenge maps providing exp and gold are:Lorien and Osglioth
The combat is fun with regular attacks and heavy attacks which lead to heroic combo's. Lots of slow motion shots when you score a great combo like heads,limbs coming off. It has an original story that is based on vague writings by Tolkien that he never really expanded on in the books. The heroes are all made up but they seem to all be familar to the characters from the books and movies who also appear in the game.

It's very Lord of the Rings-however one downer for our friends across the pond is it isn't available til later in the month-around Skyrim time which was a huge mistake on Warner Brothers part.
If you have a good internet connection you can play the game free on onlive for 30 minutes or watch people play-it can give you a good idea of what the game is.

Cool. I will be playing co-op with my dad which was the main reason we bought the game.

It's the Xbox 360 version though. Cheapest I could find was $17 shipped. Ebay's cheapest was $20. Digital download on Xbox Live Arcade was $20 as well and I didn't really have the hard drive space to spare.

I love me some co-op hack n' slash RPGs. I know people think these games are a dime a dozen but on consoles there really isn't a huge selection of these types of games. So I cherish every one that's out there.

Can't wait to play this one. A co-op hack n' slash loot-fest RPG in the Lord of the Rings world is almost too good to be true.

Solid game Fluent which I think you will love. It is great for co-op and i don't know about the console, but there are a few pC players still on. I re-loaded a month ago and finally beat it but I started my next play with all the stuff I got on the next difficulty. I thought the story was very good. I am not sure if you still lose gear if you flip-flop between characters.

It needed some more DLc I thought. A lot of map area left over they could have filled in.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Cool. I will be playing co-op with my dad which was the main reason we bought the game.

It's the Xbox 360 version though. Cheapest I could find was $17 shipped. Ebay's cheapest was $20. Digital download on Xbox Live Arcade was $20 as well and I didn't really have the hard drive space to spare.

I love me some co-op hack n' slash RPGs. I know people think these games are a dime a dozen but on consoles there really isn't a huge selection of these types of games. So I cherish every one that's out there.

Can't wait to play this one. A co-op hack n' slash loot-fest RPG in the Lord of the Rings world is almost too good to be true.

Just finished it. Took about 15 hours. Best hack n slash i've played. If you thought Daggerdale was great you are in for a real treat.

The good—

Story, voice acting, production values, gameplay and combat, character development, loot, some choice and consequences ( at least it seems as there was as I didn't replay with different choices to see what happened), companions and npc ( I really cared about what was happening to them, which is rare for me) Beleram (wait till you meet him), Secret area's and loot. I'm sure i'm forgetting some stuff but it really was a good game.

The bad—

Companion AI (shouldn't bother you much if you play co-op though), Armor sets ( nice but I never could find a complete set worth wearing), vendors were useless as the loot I found was always better except for maybe the very beginning of the game. Check points (no save anywhere, Not a big deal but if you want to quit for the night you may end up having to play another 20 min or so or forfeit your progress from last check point), could have more varied enemies but I say that about every game.

The game is hard as well, it's easy to get swarmed. you will have to learn and use all your moves to survive. You will need to block, dodge, shield bash to break enemy blocking ( it really is more than just hack n slash you need to use all you abilities to survive. This is a good thing though.

This really was a fun game and I loved the story. First game I've played in a while that I was sad to see the story end. Too bad there probably won't be a sequel.

Sounds good. I am very interested in the story. I loved the movies and it's really interesting to play a story that happens simultaneously as the movie story. Combined with co-op hack n' slash combat with RPG elements, I'm really excited to play it. I think I'm gonna really like this one.

Just got the game in the mail. Played some last night with my dad. Initial impressions are…

Wow! Awesome game. We're really enjoying it so far.

I love how enemies come in huge waves. It reminds me of the original Halo in that regard. It's very satisfying mowing down waves of goblins. The action is fast, heated and challenging. The ranger gameplay is just flat out fun. I love picking stuff off with my bow and then going in Aragorn-style and slaying everything. Fun.

And the story. I love how cinematic and story-heavy it is. The cutscenes and the way they expand on the lore is excellent.

It took a minute to get used to split-screen but it works great. I like how each of us has our own secrets to find so exploration is key. And the loot. Man there is tons of it. I wasn't expecting that much loot but it's basically Diablo in that regard. Excellent.

I played it a bit with a friend, and it was, well, garbage, in my opinion. Combat did not feel satisfying, and it was full of bugs. we did not even beat the first level, and I managed to crash twice, and my friend once. During our 3rd attempt at playing, it spawned us at different points in the level, my friend spawned where he was when the game crashed, and I spawned way back, and there was a locked door between us, with no way of us opening it, as the door was supposed to open after a battle that we had already beaten.
From an artistic point of view, it looked pretty nice, though from a technical point of view, it looked like a game from 07 or 08. Sound was pretty nice, apart from the fact that the game forced voice com on us (with no way of turning it off, and no way to set a push to talk key, so the other person had to listen to every sip of tea I decided to take) AND it had this annoying echo effect when you were indoors, which just made using the voice com annoying (we wanted to use an external piece of software for voice com).

I thought it was decent enough, though certainly nothing special. It has a really annoying stuttering bug with certain AMD/ATI cards that they promised to fix, but AFAIK - not a single patch has been released. Now that I have Nvidia - I might get back to it.

That said, it felt mostly like a somewhat simplified Bioware game - with the emphasis on combat, combat and more combat with very samey enemies. Then a bit of talking and finding loot. Actually, very much like a modern Bioware game.

But that's not a bad thing, if you're into constant and prolonged combat.

That said, I think it was pretty and especially the armor visuals were nice and detailed.

That's pretty strange stuff Fnord, I never had any of that in over 50 hours of play time. Maybe its the version you are playing. I have the Steam US version and I never was spawned into different areas. Maybe it needs a patch.
As for the instant voice, it didn't bother me as most people didn't seem to have a microphone. This is a feature that I am seeing more and more. Dead Island has it and after playing it over 60 hrs during the holidays I can say it works flawlessly.
I use Mumble for just about everything else but like I said, just didn't have a problem except my brother-in-law did lots of complaining about me munching on peanuts.